Congratulations to Kelli for winning the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Kelli's work inspires me, and I'm looking forward to reading her new book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.

Greetings from Red Bluff

Three successive Adopt-a-Highway signs:

The B'hai Faith

Eckankar

Part of the solution

Even before that, I saw a sign that said Jefferson State Chamber. And Tom spotted the hay barn with "The State of Jefferson" painted on the roof. I see it every trip, and was glad I didn't miss it.

What is the State of Jefferson? I'm not sure, but I love it (although earlier I kept calling it the Mythic Republic of Jefferson; I guess it's a State and not a Republic). The folks at Jefferson Public Radio probably know. It seems to straddle the Oregon-California line.

Crazy weather this trip, with blinding cloud bursts. We're both glad that I wasn't driving. But the dry patches were beautiful, especially driving through the Mount Shasta National Forest. We both remembered that last year we were driving that stretch in the dark while listening to the Presidential debates. This year, we had enough twilight to enjoy the pines and the hills and what peaks we could see amid the low-hanging clouds, the traveling mist.

Then we made a quick stop in Redding and drove that magical half hour to Red Bluff, dusk descending over grasslands and oaks, the road mostly flat and mostly straight.

I thought I'd work on poems or think about poems or read poems in the truck. I did not. Tomorrow continues to be another day.

I'm sensing a theme

Racking the Cabernet Sauvignon that we pressed yesterday into a barrel.

Getting a little more wine out of the tank, very carefully.

Topping off the barrel.

Two full barrels = heavy.

The wand in a bin of Cabernet Franc.

The pump is on, and the level is going down...

and down...

...and the tank is filling up.

This is looking a lot like yesterday.

Jamie wants to press out the last drop.

It's looking a little surreal.

Grape cake.

Pressed

Yesterday, we pressed Cabernet Sauvignon. Tom had already started when I arrived with the requested additional containers for the surplus wine.

Wine making involves a lot of cleaning.

Cranking the press.

The pressed grapes glisten through the basket slats.

Pressed juice rushing into the bucket.

A beautiful grape cake. It looks almost like some richly embroidered fabric.

A good shot of the grape cake.

The next step was to dig into that cake and load it all into bags for later composting. It's fun to break off big chunks and try to load them without spilling skins all over the ground (messy). And, that mass is warm. After our second press, I was doing this in the dark, I had cold water inside my gloves, and my feet were numb. I really looked forward to getting into the warm center of that mass of grape skins.

Inviting your reader to the poem

A while back, VioletWrites made a comment about how when she sits down to write, her muse always joins her. That made me wonder whether I ever invite my muse to a writing session. Do I? Do you?

I hope she'll show up, but do I consciously inviter her? I don't think so.

Recently I've been rereading Lynda Hull, and I've noticed that not only do her poems often move from a present observation to a past experience, but that she often if not always has another person in the poem.

She is speaking to someone, whether it's a someone from her past or an undefined You or a clearly defined You as the reader. It's a part of her voice, a part of the way she comes to writing and sorting through the various truths. And that You, no matter who it is, helps invite me as a reader into the poem.

It's given me something to think about.

Catching up

Busy doings chez nous. Tom has been leaving early and staying late to punch down the wine. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I made it out of the house with him.

Yes, this is in the morning.

Carbon dioxide escapes as part of the fermentation process, and bubbles up. (Sorry you can't see the bubbling action.)

Two barrels of fermenting Chardonnay.

One big bucket of fermenting Chardonnay. It has just started (and it doesn't look like wine, but it does look like fermentation).

Using the high-tech setup to pull out some Merlot for brix measurements.

Measuring the brix.

The next day, that Chardonnay is really cooking. And the shop does smell like bread rising. It's all about the yeast (for now).

This past Saturday, we crushed two more tons of grapes, a ton of Cabernet Franc and a ton of Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes were pretty, and pretty sticky, and we were all pretty tired by the end of it. I don't have pictures because I was putting all my energy into getting it done. But maybe tomorrow I can make it to that early morning punch-down.

Itchy

Do you ever start to feel itchy when you haven't had a chance to write?